A good week/bad week for ...

A good week for ...

Larger people

Michel Lapointe has been freed from prison in Montreal, Canada, where he was supposed to be serving time for drug trafficking, because he couldn't fit his 205kg (32st) bulk into the showers or onto the beds, or fit his legs under the refectory tables. Eat up!

Margaret Thatcher

An internal review by the increasingly self-chastising BBC has found that a documentary about her relationship with Wales, which was shown in May 2007, was unfairly biased against the former PM.

Max Mosley

There's something admirable about his refusal to be embarrassed. Last week, the president of the FAI popped up again to defend himself against Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, who had described his sexual practices as being of 'unimaginable depravity'.

Old jokes

How we laughed to discover that the Monty Python 'dead parrot' joke in fact dates - unbeknown to the Pythons, naturally - from 4th-century AD Greece. The same joke, only told about a dead slave rather than a parrot, has been uncovered by William Berg, a classics professor, which just goes to show that the oldies really are often the best.

A bad week for ...

Ken Livingstone

Delighted as we always are to hear from the former mayor of London, we couldn't help feeling his latest project, a sort of mayoralty in exile called Progressive London, smacked slightly of desperation. Move on, Ken, feel the grass under your feet - at least until the next election.

Francis Bacon

The art market is looking increasingly like it has been hit by the world's economic troubles after all. Bacon's Study for Self Portrait was withdrawn from an auction in New York when it failed to reach its reserve price.

Status Quo

A conman has convinced the whole of Dover he is Francis Rossi of the legendary rockers, despite lacking the trademark ponytail. Dover council, Dover castle and the mayor were all taken in by his offer to get his 'friends' Paul McCartney and Charlotte Church to a local music festival, and for the past year he's enjoyed meals with local grandees and rides in the mayoral limo. And he can't even play the guitar. Sign him up.

Bernie Ecclestone

Much speculation last week that he was being left by his younger and much taller wife. While Bernie would only say that she'd moved out of their mansion because of the noise, we can't help remembering that much of their fortune is in her name, which seemed clever at the time because she's a non-dom.